“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting around for the rat to die.”
Traveling Mercies
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting around for the rat to die.”
Traveling Mercies
Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“For out of every hole the rats came tumbling.”
English Fairy Tales (1890), More English Fairy Tales (1894), Pied Piper
“one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap”
“Despite all my rage
I am still just a rat in the cage.”
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
Variant: Resentment is like drinking a poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Source: Wishful Drinking
“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
“And die of nothing but a rage to live”
Variant: You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live.
Source: Moral Essays
Remarks at Philander Smith College (26 January 2006), as quoted in "Coulter Jokes About Poisoning Supreme Court Justice" at Fox News (27 January 2006) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183006,00.html.
2006